Everyone knows how to have two-way communication. You talk for a
while, then somebody else talks for a while. So why did the Fetzer
Institute send its employees to a series of workshops to teach them
about dialogue?

"We were looking for creative ways to work out conflicts,
deepen our relationships with each other and generally communicate
better," explains Wendy Lombard, director of organizational
learning for the 50-person Kalamazoo, Michigan, health-care
research foundation. After looking over the available communication
courses, they chose a series of four-day workshops from the
Dialogue Group, a Laguna Hills, California, consulting
firm.

Lombard felt the dialogue seminars were different from most
offerings in the way they emphasized the value of exploring
feelings and building trust in group settings. And instead of just
learning to converse better, Fetzer employees were taught
specific skills designed to improve understanding and boost team
productivity.

The difference between dialogue and other communication
techniques is that dialogue is not really about talking, says
Sarita Chawla, president of leadership management consulting firm
MetaLens in San Rafael, California. "It's in listening
that dialogue happens," she says.

Companies such as Hewlett Packard, AT&T and Shell are
hearing dialogue's promises--and they're responding by
sending employees to similar seminars. But unlike some recent
management trends, the drive toward dialogue is well-suited to
small organizations as well.

Small companies can easily involve everyone in dialogue, says
Chawla. And this communication technique works particularly well
when getting projects off the ground, whether you're hiring a
new employee or starting a business venture.

Whether large or small, companies that look into dialogue
won't be disappointed, says Lombard. The results include a
deeper sense of community, greater trust among staff members and a
more complete understanding of the organization's mission.

Benefits also reach the bottom line, notes Lombard.
"It's more productive," she says. "Things get
done faster because people have a shared vision."

Mark Henricks is an Austin, Texas, writer specializing in
business topics.

Tools Of The Trade

To achieve its purpose, dialogue uses a specific set of
communication techniques. The dialogue toolbox is organized into
four main components:

1. Suspension of judgment. It's common for
people to conduct running internal commentaries on what other
people are saying, says Glenna Gerard, co-founder with Linda
Ellinor of the Dialogue Group and co-author of Dialogue
(John Wiley & Sons). "As I'm listening to what
you're saying, I'm also listening internally to my
responses," she says. Dialogue trainees are taught to listen
for--and then silence--their internal narratives.

2. Listening effectively. Dialogue's second
major technique is designed to make us more effective listeners.
Lots of communication courses emphasize listening, but dialogue
takes a somewhat different approach.

Specifically, dialogue calls for conversations to proceed at a
slower pace. In addition, it specifies longer silences between
speakers. These differences, according to the theory, give you time
to absorb the information.

3. Identification of assumptions. Unidentified
assumptions hurt understanding because they make open communication
difficult, experts say.

Dialogue participants are taught to identify not only their own
assumptions but to listen for shared assumptions in the group.

4. Inquiry and reflection. Any communication seminar
will recommend asking gently probing questions and thinking the
responses over before offering a rejoinder.

Dialogue is the same, only more so, says Gerard. "The
difference is in the depth," she says, "and in what
we're listening for and what we're inquiring
about."

Practicing dialogue does call for some unusual approaches. For
instance, one tool recommended by Ellinor and Gerard in their book
is to hold a meeting that is specifically not intended to help
reach a decision. Instead, they recommend, announce a meeting whose
only purpose is to gather information and allow for the airing of
opinions and ideas. While it may not result in a decision by
itself, such a meeting will help you gather information and set the
stage so you can make a decision, they say.

Dialogue Duties

While the practice of dialogue is clearly useful for managing
meetings, it can also help satisfy broader business needs.
Creativity, for instance, may be enhanced in an atmosphere of
dialogue. It is an excellent tool for companies attempting to
innovate new products or processes, says Ellinor. Better
team-building is another effective result of dialogue. It is also a
useful tool for dealing with diverse work forces.

Generally, any long-term plan benefits from dialogue, says
Gerard. "Another good place for dialogue is when you have
recalcitrant problems occurring over and over again--when you
obviously haven't gotten to the root of the problem," she
adds.

Dialogue has limitations, however. The first concerns speed.
Slow-paced conversations can be out of place in circumstances
calling for fast action. "Dialogue is not a tool to use when
you have some kind of emergency situation and need to make a
decision quickly," warns Gerard.

This method of communication also may not work well when
conflict among group members is high and people are unable to open
up. It's also likely to fail when group leaders or company
managers are committed to hierarchical, command-and-control
formats.

Entrepreneurs may go wrong if they approach dialogue as an end
in itself, without keeping an eye firmly fixed on the results they
hope to achieve, warns Chawla. "Dialogue is the train by which
you get to the destination," she says. "It's not the
destination."

Bringing It Home

Peter Senge, co-author of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook
(Doubleday) and one of dialogue's most visible champions,
considers dialogue a key tool for creating the learning
organization that has become an objective of many businesses
today.

Other dialogue boosters include the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where the Dialog Project has been researching the
concept since the early 1990s. Dialogue experts also frequently
cite David Bohm, a physicist and writer on relationships between
quantum physics and everyday life.

Students of dialogue can choose from a number of helpful books,
including the one mentioned above as well as On Dialogue
(Routledge), written by Bohm.

If you think this is a technique your company can benefit from,
don't stop with just reading about it. Personal instruction is
essential for good dialogue, experts stress. Consultants suggest
businesses attend three- to four-day workshops conducted by
trainers, which cost about $1,500 per person, followed by regular
in-house practice and implementation sessions.

It need not be that expensive, however. Chawla says some
community colleges offer excellent courses on dialogue as part of
their curriculum on learning organizations.

Follow-up is probably the biggest cost. Fetzer augmented its two
four-day seminars with monthly practice sessions to help its
employees incorporate dialogue into their daily work.

If that sounds like a surprising amount of trouble to go to in
order to learn something that most of us think we already know,
consider that the results can be surprisingly profound. "We
didn't know what was going to happen when we gave people a
chance to express their deepest desires about [our]
organization," says Lombard. "But we found that people
felt a sense of freedom, truth, participation and inclusion. It
really began a cultural change for us."